Guide
Built between 1433 and 1447 by Murad II, the Üç Şerefeli Mosque stands between the early and the classical manner of Ottoman art, and the plan first used here was new.
The great central dome, twenty-four metres across, rests on six supports: two free-standing piers and four engaged in the walls. Beside it are square bays each covered by two smaller domes. The building is, as an innovation, a rectangle laid out crosswise, so as to reach a space that develops across rather than along. Sinan later used this plan in a more developed form in his mosques in İstanbul.
The courtyard with its arcade is likewise the first of its kind in Ottoman architecture, and minarets were set at its four corners. In these things the Üç Şerefeli Mosque is a monumental building that led the way for the mosques that followed. The original painted work in the domes of the arcade is among the oldest to survive in an Ottoman mosque.
The monumental minaret with three balconies that gives the mosque its name is 67.62 metres high, and each balcony is reached by its own separate stair. The shaft is given movement by zigzags of red stone and squares of white.
